Time and Distance
by PoisonComeUndone
Summary: There's something almost crippling in the thought of talking about someone that was your whole world but isn't there anymore. Watson knows, because every time he's thought about telling Holmes' daughter about him, he decides it isn't time yet.


I have about a billion other things I desperately need to be writing but…this sounded awesome in so many ways, and I'm sick so…humoring myself by filling it a tiny, tiny bit, XD

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These days, nearly every day was the same. They were filled largely with time spent at his surgery across town, after which he came home to Baker's Street, a hot dinner, and his excitable daughter. She would babble on, telling him of her day, and he would listen while he ate most of his dinner in an attempt to set a good example. He had to hope that kind of habit started early. After dinner it was here, this chair by the fire while she played until bedtime. Sometimes, lately, he joined her. It had been three years, after all, and while he didn't really feel any different, he felt as if he _should_. In any case, a child needed her parent's attention, however weary it might be.

Tonight, though…tonight he was exhausted. It had snowed, a damp snow with an even damper cold that had seeped into his bones, his leg and shoulder aching horribly. He'd hardly had the energy to sip at half his bowl of soup before settling in here, one palm rubbing slowly against his thigh, his other hand clenched against the armrest. This had been Holmes favorite chair. He sighed, eyes closing as he rubbed a little more fervently. When he did it, it never seemed to help. Ludicrous, he knew, because logically and medically the heat and pressure should have had the same loosening effect it always had, but he felt no relief. He had become too accustomed to different hands, rough and calloused but steady and soothing in their touch. In their absence the pain refused to be banished by anything else, twinging sharply as if to taunt him at the very thought of relief.

Watson let out a slow breath, forcing his hand to still its useless ministrations. He would sit, soak in the heat from the fire, and try to go to sleep directly after putting Morgan to bed. With any kind of mercy, sleep would find him for at least a few hours so he would not be utterly useless tomorrow. After all, there were always patients to see.

"Papa?" He started at the sound of her soft voice at his elbow, her small fingers gripping at the fabric of his shirt.

He blinked his eyes open, giving her a smile that came easy. She was, for all intents and purposes, the only one to ever see it. "Yes, sweetheart?"

"What was father like?"

_God_, of all the nights for her to question him…

He swallowed hard, pulled himself up to sit a little straighter in the chair. "He…" The single word alone scraped in his throat, like the grinding of rusty gears. He'd always known one day she would ask. She was curious as a kitten, smart as a whip. Indeed, he saw more of Holmes in her every day. He'd never doubted, then, that she wondered, he simply hadn't been sure of the _when_. Beyond that, he knew only that he wasn't quite ready for the questions. He never talked about him, if he could help it. There was a word to Mrs. Hudson here or there, and he'd been once to see Mycroft but it had pained him too much and he'd never tried to go again. He knew he'd have to make the words come eventually, to make certain she knew of her father, but…

He'd always planned to tell her when she was older, when he could tell her fully of the kind of man Holmes was. More to the point, probably, when enough time had passed that he could speak of him without feeling like something was still slowly breaking.

He'd hesitated too long, and he knew from the look she gave him that she heard the uncertainty in his silence. "Eliza said he helped her, and that's why she's my governess, and she said that he helped her brother too and she said that he used to be-"

"Alright, alright." Talking _about_ him just might be easier than _hearing_ the things Eliza had told Morgan about him. At least, he could hope so, because just hearing her start had brought a lump to his throat. She'd have had nothing but good to speak of him of course, he _had_saved her family, but all the same it seemed…

There was something different, hearing how others had seen him when he alone had known the man so well. There was a divide, a line between Holmes as the world had known him and Holmes as only Watson had ever seen.

That realization more than any other thought was enough to make him rise from his chair, hushing her softly as she began to question him. He crossed the room to the desk, reaching into the bottommost drawer to find the papers he wanted. If she was going to hear of Holmes already, if she was at only 6 already old enough to make it a necessity, then it should be from him.

After he returned from the falls, Watson had put everything away. Not initially, of course. The first weeks had been spent in a state of abject disconnection from the world around him, as well as the continued trials of caring for a smile child. When his thoughts had begun to clear, however, and he had written and published what was to be the last of his and Holmes adventures, there had seemed little good that could come of keeping them in plain sight. The trunk containing his journals had been shut away in Holmes' room, and all the old newspaper clippings he had saved of their successes had gone into this drawer.

It slid open easily even after all the time of disuse, and he lifted the paper carefully into his hands, smoothing across the picture on the foremost page. It was aging but not yet brittle, still fresh enough that the dates shocked him. Had it truly only been three years since their last triumph together? He knew the timeline well, he thought of it almost every day, but seeing it in _print_ was something else entirely.

Needlessly, he smoothed the newsprint again, fingertips lingering at Holmes throat. He'd been injured, that day. When they came home Watson had bandaged the burn at the base of his neck, and they'd made love on the settee. He could still feel Holmes hot breath against his ear when he'd asked for more, muttering with mock terse frustration that despite any other injuries he might have sustained, nothing had occurred that required Watson to move so slowly with the lower half of his body.

He shuffled the pages, slipping that one into the middle in favor of another, a picture following a less trying case. The third looked promising, and he straightened them in his hand before returning to take his place in the chair. Morgan was so eager, so incessantly curious, and though she showed every intention of attaching vice-like to his arm, he motioned her into his lap, gathering her in close.

The newspaper he lay against the arm of the chair, in plain sight. He could not resist smoothing the corners once more before he spoke. "That was a few years before you were born, not too far uptown. We had just finished speaking to Scotland Yard." 'Speaking'. In all honesty, they'd just finished informing them both in a roundabout way that they'd be taking credit for the case again, but that was neither here nor there at the moment. He turned his head just enough to kiss the top of her head, reaching up to smooth her hair afterward. "Eliza was right. He helped her and her family, and many others. He…helped me, when I returned from the war." More than he could ever say. Without Holmes, he might never have made it at all for reasons that had little to do with his injuries.

Morgan reached out, her own fingers taking the same path his had as they brushed over the surface. "He looks angry."

Watson couldn't help but chuckle at that, the feel of it strange and rare as it warmed his chest. "A little. But you can't judge him on that, love. You know…" He shifted his one arm grip, let go of the newspaper to reach up and traced a finger down the bridge of her nose until she smiled. "You're very like him, my little Morgana. I see him in you all the time." _All_ the time. Especially in the things she noticed, things most children her age tended to ignore. And the eyes…undoubtedly, she had his eyes.

She picked up the papers herself, shifted to the next. He and Holmes, standing over a body near the Thames.

Gently, he swept a lock of unruly dark hair back behind her ear. "I wish you could remember him." The words were barely there at all, so soft he almost hoped she hadn't heard him but he knew different by the way she shook her head, the way the corners of her mouth fell just a little. He should never have said it, even if it was true.

She shuffled them again, and once more. Holmes in alley, the two of them with Mycroft after a government case. "Did he like me?"

The question was so out of place, so unexpected that it took him by surprise, and he lost a second or two to that shock before he could answer, his arms tightening around her. "Like you? Of _course_ he liked you. You were…Morgan, he loved you very much." And he had, undoubtedly, though Watson had never heard him say it. The words themselves were of little consequence, however. He'd never heard Holmes say the words to him either, but that didn't mean he'd ever doubted Holmes feelings for him. Not once, not even the times he'd wanted to knock him senseless.

"Then why do you never tell me about him?" Her voice was muffled, her face turned to press against his shirt and he was glad. He wouldn't have wanted her to see the look on his face, just then.

It had been Holmes idea, having a child. Well, Holmes idea _because_ of what he could see in Watson, but all the same, Holmes had suggested in, in his decisive way that made it not at all a suggestion. Watson had _wanted_ her, absolutely, but he'd never been sure about his capabilities as a father even with Holmes at his side, and alone it seemed he was fairing even worse. He tried his best to give her everything he could…love, support, structure, knowledge…everything he'd ever learned about what growing children needed. Somehow, he'd never thought to realize that even in his absence, Holmes was something else she needed. Perhaps even more than he did.

He squeezed hard at the bridge of his nose, the pressure staving off the way his eyes burned. At least now, she deserved an honest answer.

"Because…I miss him. I miss him very much."

She curled her arm around his neck, hugging him the best she could, the way she had ever since she'd been tiny and reaching up to beckon him to join her on the rug by the fire to read her a story. She said nothing else just then, her questions seemingly silenced by the pain he knew even she had to have been able to hear ringing from his last words. God bless her, she had learned from living with him when to let something go. It was something she should have never been forced to learn so young at all, a product of the burdens he carried, but _this_ wasn't something he could continue to let himself keep justifying.

She needed him to talk, and even if it felt like it was killing him, he'd find a way to do it.

Surprisingly (or perhaps not so surprising at all), it was easier, once he was talking. He told her snatches of the early years here in Baker Street, of the way Holmes had left the marks she'd seen in the walls. Of early mornings on country farms and late nights huddled by the roadside, of how it felt to bring Gladstone home in his pocket once, the pup flopping out of Watson's jacket to gnaw on Holmes' sleeve, tiny feet catching in his watch chain as he tried to drag himself closer. He talked past the time when he felt her fall asleep, breath evening as she slumped to huddle in closer against his chest, went on for his own sake until his voice trailed into nothing, something finally catching in his throat.

From down the stairs, he could hear Mrs. Hudson's clock chime midnight. He was exhausted to the core, hoarse from too many words that hit too close, eyes burning from near constant loss of sleep mingled with the sharp sting of seeing his face after nearly two long years without it.

Sometimes, he hated Holmes for this. He had realized, as a boy, that he would never lead the same kind of a life as his peers. While he might marry for convenience or convention he would never meet a lady with whom he desired to build a life, never _choose_, never fall in love. There were clubs, for people like him, and he would take his chances, from time to time. It would have been an acceptable existence. He could get by, as a doctor. Even after Afghanistan, he would have eventually found a way to manage on his own. If he'd never met Holmes. He'd have never moved into these rooms, never followed him around on his cases, never felt the jolt he had that Saturday morning when he'd reached over to drape a blanket over his friend as he lay on the tiger skin rug and realized that he'd never wanted anything more than he desired to lay down beside him then. If he'd never met Holmes, he'd have never ended up screaming for him over the roar of the falls, his calls lost to the pounding of the spray. That moment he had relived in his dreams more than any other, enough to wake him every time, cold sweat sticking his linens to his chest.

In _those_ moments, fresh back from the falls in his mind, he hated Holmes for doing this to him, altering him so fundamentally he could never hope to recover.

It was always short lived. It was outweighed, overshadowed by everything he could never, _would_ never regret. He had his notebooks, his all too inept scribbling of memories too priceless to properly capture, but they were comfort all the same. Someday, he knew, he'd be able to read them again. Someday, when she was older, Morgan could read them herself.

He shifted, sliding just a little closer to the fire, his arms tightening around his daughter as she slept. She was everything, now, the piece of his life he hadn't managed yet to lose. She was beautiful and brilliant, a glimmering spark in the dark, and she was all he had left of Holmes. Whatever else he might have wished away in a moment of anger, he never ceased to be thankful that if nothing else could be changed, at least Holmes had given him _this_.

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